Vox Feminae, the third album by Les Kapsber’girls and their second on Alpha, finds the female fivesome exploring music by women composers in baroque Italy. It’s a time and a place that has proved particularly fertile in recent years, but this scrupulously researched and gloriously performed program proves that Barbara Strozzi and Francesca Caccini were merely the tip of an impressive iceberg.

Both of the aforementioned composers were fortunate in having artistic fathers – poet and librettist Giulio Strozzi and composer Giulio Caccini respectively – who recognised and supported their talented daughters (in her day, Barbara Strozzi was said to be the most published composer in all Venice). Both were accomplished singers and instrumentalists who managed to avoid being pigeonholed simply as talented performers, the fate of many a gifted female musician in those days. Antonia Bembo had it harder. She had to escape a violent husband in her native Venice before winding up in Paris under the protective patronage of Louis XIV.

Others here enjoyed less freedom. Francesca Campana, who at 14 managed to have her works published by a prestigious printer in Rome,...